Kafka Lives!

I refer, of course, to the author Franz Kafka, who wrote unsettling stories of ordinary people caught up in bizarre and surreal events. The prime example is his novel "The Trial," which tells the story of a man named Joseph K who wakes up one morning and, for reasons never revealed, is arrested, investigated, and tried over a period of years for an unspecified crime, based on evidence he is not allowed to see.

No, it's not set in the Bush administration.

Franz Kafka's name has entered the language in the adjective kafkaesque, defined as "marked by surreal distortion and often a sense of impending danger; a 'kafkaesque' situation is usually bizarre and frustrating."

I am now in the third week of a bureaucratic knife fight with the managers of the self-storage facility where much of our accumulated junk resides when not needed. One day I received a dunning letter from the facility telling me that my access code to enter the facility had been disabled and a second lock placed on my storage unit because I was delinquent in my payments. Upon investigation, I discovered that they were claiming that I had not paid my rent for the month of March, 2007 (although I had a clear history of paying promptly and in advance, and had already paid the rent for April).

Well, I thought, this is silly. I spent some time on line and on the phone with my credit union and assembled a pile of documents proving that the payment had been made on time and my check had been cashed. You would think that would be sufficient to prove that I was innocent.

You would be wrong.

The manager of the storage facility says she has no record of receiving or depositing my check. Therefore, although I can prove the rent has been paid, she still insists it's my responsibility to prove that they actually received the money...and until I can do that, they're keeping me locked away from my property.

Is it just me, or am I being penalized for someone's inept bookkeeping?

I understand that mistakes sometimes happen. I think I may even have made one myself sometime. But when I can prove that I paid the bill in good faith, it seems to me that it's the storage company's responsibility to figure out what they did with the money. We're only talking about $133.95, so it's not likely that some shifty employee is partying in Rio on my March rent. It's more likely that my check somehow got diverted into some other renter's account...and I think I'll have a tough time figuring out how to prove that.

I have asked my credit union to send me - posthaste - a copy of the cancelled check, which the manager claims will let her see who cashed the check and where the money went. I don't mind doing this if it helps clear up this mess. I am bothered, though, by the guilty-until-proven-innocent attitude taken by the storage company.

I'll let you know how it comes out.

Kafka lives.

Have a good weekend. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo